Justin - Part II

We have a basement with our house.  It is not fixed up, but it is not a cellar like my parents have.  We have three open rooms - one room is the laundry room, another room has a pool table left by previous residents and the furnance is also in that same room.  The third room is a big open room that happens to have clothes lines and the boys outdoor summer toys.  It is not unusual for them to come down with me when I am doing the laundry and stay down there and ride their bikes.

Yesterday, Darren comes running upstairs and said 'the soap you wash clothes with is leaking.  Justin did it.'  I went downstairs and there is laundry detergent everywhere.  We buy the gallon size that lays down and has a push spout.  However, the push spout was unscrewed and there is detergent just dripping from the bottle as all of it had already spilled.  I made myself count to five before I exploded, but that did not help.  I marched back up the stairs and made all three boys sit on the couch (Nathan was upstairs when all this happened, but one angry look from me had him changing his mind about arguing against sitting on the couch).  Bruce and I then put our heads together on the best way to clean this up.  We decided to cut a gallon ice cream bucket lid in half so we could kind of scoop up the detergent and pour into a funnel.  I made Bruce go back upstairs and keep an eye on the boys while I cleaned everything up.  Luckily(?) the dirty bath towels sat next to the pile of spilled detergent, so I mopped up the residue with the towels.  Then I threw them into the wash with no detergent....even then there were a lot of suds!